Brit band Muse aims for a bigger following in the U.S.

SUSAN CARPENTERLos Angeles Times

Published Friday, December 24, 2004

Throughout Europe, the English rock band Muse has achieved an almost godlike status -- wowing the media, selling out arenas and racking up awards for its latest record, "Absolution." Having conquered that continent with its artfully orchestrated, hard-charging rock, you'd think the trio would be peeved that the United States hasn't entirely caught on, but lead singer Matt Bellamy enjoys the challenge.

"It's the most exciting time to be in a band -- when people are discovering you," Bellamy said during a recent interview from Orlando, a city Muse was playing for the first time. "In the sense of touring, you're going out there and playing to crowds that have never seen you before. It's nice to try and win them over."

Rounded out with Dominic Howard on drums and Chris Wolstenholme on bass, Muse has been together since 1994. But massive success came with the group's third and latest record, released on Warner Bros. Records in March. The timing, apparently, was finally right for the group's sound, which marries the instrumentation of classical music with the drive of rock and metal, and for the album's message, which many listeners heard as a welcome commentary on world events.

But the album more specifically addresses Bellamy's emotions about the end of a six-year personal romance and the band's yearlong break from touring after five nearly nonstop years on the road.

"I tried to sing about hysterical emotions, or moments of panic or fear," said Bellamy, 26. "The songs were coming from a half negative point of view, but also trying to find what makes you want to carry on throughout those things."

Carrying on in the face of negativity is, after all, how the band was born -- out of boredom living in the small seaside town of Teignmouth. A former holiday resort gone bust, there were few job opportunities and even less to do for teens, who passed their time drinking cider on the beach and, eventually, forming bands.

The band takes its name from a local legend that there was some kind of spirit, or muse, hanging around Teignmouth prompting its youth to make music and invent other ways of entertaining themselves. Out of nowhere, it seemed, eight groups had formed -- enough to rent out sports halls and throw parties.

Muse was not the best known of the bunch, perhaps because the group was instrumental, "with the odd vocal here and there," said Bellamy, who had yet to find the powerfully emotive voice he sings with today. It's Bellamy's desperate, almost pleading vocals that make Muse one of the more dramatic rock acts to come along in recent years, but in 1994 his "kind of female sounding" singing style was not at all en vogue. Grunge was in, and the raspy sort of screams favored by Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder.

"I always liked singers like Nina Simone -- a more bluesy, soulful style of singing, a very expressive way of singing -- but I never thought it could work inside what we did as Muse at the time," Bellamy said.

His opinion changed after seeing a Jeff Buckley concert: "He was the first person I saw who did a vocal style that was high. He did a lot of falsetto stuff that I felt I could do."

Buckley inspired Bellamy to embrace his "female" singing style, but that isn't the comparison that's ordinarily drawn. Bellamy's voice, and therefore the band, is more often compared to Radiohead singer Thom Yorke. Both bands embrace electronic flourishes, and the vocals are at times startlingly similar, but the two groups are, in fact, quite different. Where Radiohead's music is arty, Muse is, at times, almost metal. Nevertheless, it's the Radiohead parallel that seems to have slowed a full U.S. embrace of the band -- some would say unfairly.

American audiences, it seems, are getting over it, too.

It's through touring, rather than radio airplay, that Muse has won its core following.

"In terms of how we've become known, it's always been through touring and going live," Bellamy said.